Catching up with the pass-catchers
Posted: August 14, 2007 02:28 PM
Tuesday is a "receivers day" for me. I talked to George West this morning for an upcoming story for our print edition and also jumped in for a few minutes with D.J. Hord and receivers coach Rob Ianello during the morning media session.
Hord, a junior who came to Notre Dame as a highly touted prospect, has had a rougher go of it with the Irish than he probably expected to have, due mostly to an Achilles injury that kept him out all last season. The last time I talked to him, in the spring, he seemed a little unsure of himself, a little discouraged about what he'd been through and the possiblity of never getting back to where he was physically pre-injury, but that's no longer the case. He's very upbeat now — he smiled almost the entire time I was around him — and optimistic about his chances to make an impact this season.
“I’m over it," Hord said about his injury. "I’m good to go now.”
Hord says he feels like he's competing for a starting spot — and that's exactly the attitude he should have — but at least at the start of the season, No. 3 seems more of an achieveable goal. David Grimes is unquestionably the No. 1 receiver and West is pretty solid at No. 2. Before Saturday's open practice, I would have said that Robby Parris was probably the odds-on favorite for the No. 3 spot, but Hord made the biggest impression on me Saturday, and if he's that consistent on the days we don't see the whole practice, I could see him pushing Parris.
Hord seemed to know he was "on" on Saturday, but he also realized the importance of playing that well every day.
“Camp is more than just one practice," he said. "You have to have consistent practices. Just because I had one good practice doesn’t mean I’m starting now, you know? I have to keep going.”
Ianello said that the receivers have taken the approach that it's about who IS here, not who's not. Jeff Samardzija and Rhema McKnight were great players for Notre Dame, but there's no reason why the players on the roster now can't be just as good. Hord said the receivers are using the skepticism on the outside of the program as motivation.
“We feel that a lot of people are doubting us right now," Hord said. "We’re playing right now like we have a chip on our shoulder, that we have something to prove, because right now everybody’s saying, ‘Well, Jeff, Ray and Mo are gone, so what’s left?’ So for us, we want to try to go out there and prove that there’s something still here.”
As far as Ianello is concerned, he's encouraged by the "leftovers" from the Samardzija-McKnight-Stovall era. Not only is there talent, there's competition, and that's going to help the group improve as a whole.
“It’s enough to be competitive, but if we all stay at the same plane, that’s not what we’re looking for," Ianello said. "We want the arrow to be going up every day, the arrow of improvement to be going up. I feel that we’re making strides in that area. Are we where we need to be to be able to play a game? No. We have a lot of work we need to continue to get done, absolutely. The guys see that, but they also see some real positive things going on, and that is what you want to have happen.
"You want to see some things that you’re doing as an offense, that you’re emphasizing to them, you want to see them now execute it on the field and it work. That gives them a chance to say, ‘Wow, OK, that’s good, let me try the next step, let me keep doing this.’ If you continue to build on that, then I think you have something with your group.”
Ianello, as you probably know, is also Notre Dame's recruiting coordinator and never escapes from a media huddle without fielding a few questions on that aspect of his job. He said the Internet is responsible for moving up the timetable for recruits to make decisions. It's not good or bad, just the way things work now. When he was going to college, he said, he didn't see the school he chose to attend until he showed up for orientation. Now, of course, most players visit at least a handful of schools before making their choice.
Notre Dame has been recruiting so well this season that the Irish don't have many scholarships left to give, but Ianello said he's not worried about missing out on players the coaches have targeted because those players haven't made a decision yet. If they're good enough, and if Notre Dame wants them, there will be a scholarship there for them.
“Philosophically speaking, Coach Weis is not offering a scholarship to anybody unless we want them to come," Ianello said. "We’re not one of those schools that blanket-offers a bunch of kids in the hopes that some come and some don’t. If we offer a guy a scholarship, we’re hoping they come, so we’ll circle the wagons on the guys we want to have come to school here that maybe haven’t made some decisions and see how we come out.”
I'm about to head over to practice now, so check back a little later this afternoon for today's 20 minutes.
